


The Ashes

by krycekasks



Category: Ant-Man (Movies), Black Panther (2018), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - End Game, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death, End Game fix it?, F/F, It's not Steve or Buck, Living on a space station, M/M, Near Future, Original Character(s), Past Character Death, Scientist Bucky, Steve Feels, science jargon warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-19 06:58:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19351825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krycekasks/pseuds/krycekasks
Summary: 80 years have passed since the Avengers defeated Thanos and Earth technology is catching up with the rest of the galaxy.Steve and Bucky have their own little place, a small space station orbiting Europa. The super-soldier serum lets them live in low gravity with little consequence. By mutual decision, when Bucky had returned from wherever he’d gone to when Thanos had snapped his fingers, he and Steve retired from action. Bucky had pursued his interest in science. Starting in Wakanda, he still works with Shuri to this day. Their small outpost, part of a larger Wakandan outer-planet science installation, is non-invasive enough that they can maintain and run equipment monitoring the mysterious life in the oceans under the ice of Europa. Bucky is due back from a research mission to the Heliopause, the edge of the solar system, testing their latest theories. Steve doesn’t really know the details - he’s just happy tending the ice planet that feels like his backyard, keeping up with Sam’s grandkids back on Earth, maintaining a safe home for him and Bucky, and generally avoiding all thoughts of the past.





	The Ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [duointherain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/duointherain/gifts).



> This is my little story for the 2019 Cap Reverse Big Bang.
> 
> Thanks to [duointherain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/duointherain/pseuds/duointherain) for such a cute and inspiring art, it just screamed Steve on a space adventure!
> 
> The great and lovely [Mari-Knickerbocker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mari_Knickerbocker/pseuds/Mari_Knickerbocker) beta'd this work with little time to spare - you are always game, thank you for your support <3
> 
> Fact: Bucky is Luis' uncle, you will never convince me otherwise. This story is in the same universe as [LittleBlackFox's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleblackfox/pseuds/littleblackfox) brilliant gift, [Uncle Bucky](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18523489) \- thank you Fox for your love and support and for bringing so much life to Luis!

**-;:;:;:;:;——;:;:;:;:;-**

 

“This is Station 68214 confirming lock and hold at minimum range of 18 point 45. Orientation as expected, vehicle is in the corridor and holding at 20. Performing docking review.”

Steve reaches out and flips the switches for the outer docking port floodlights in a fluid pass of his hand across the upper console in front of him. He keeps his eyes on the window, watching as the field of stars fades quickly to impenetrable black as light forms a circle around the port bringing the crew pod into view. He can barely make out the larger science cruiser parked just outside their orbit, reflecting back the sunlight bouncing off the surface of Jupiter and to a lesser extent the icy moon of Europa. His fingers drum across the console in an erratic pattern - now that Bucky is so close to being home his patience has finally run out. 

The pilot responds after a few seconds, “Copy that 68214. W-213 on approach.”

Steve narrows his eyes at the shuttle. A small jet blows first on the planet-side, then again spaceward. _They’re docking manually._ Steve scans the viewports of the module, knowing full well that he won’t be able to see anyone inside. There are many reasons to override the autopilot and dock manually, but none that include the words the helpful voice in his head replies with heavy sarcasm, _Don’t worry, Cap, everything in working order over here_. He knows their station dock is fine, he’d double checked it that morning after his daily moonside surface check, so it must be on their end. He switches his monitor view to piggyback on the approaching ship’s system to see what they see. The orbital docking port on the side of their little science station looks like it always does: the Lego-like assembly of zero-gravity living and command modules in a seemingly haphazard configuration, the standard thermal shielding decorated with the Wakandan flag and the Exo-Planet Science Mission logo that he’d painted himself during development all those decades ago. He can even spot the S.R. + B.B. with a heart around it etched just to the side of the observing cupola, mostly because he knows where to look. Everything is as it should be, except for the slight camera jitter as the other pilot lines up the clamp ejectors. 

“Everything alright there W-213?” Steve feels only slightly silly using the official call outs, but it’s the System-wide flight protocol and he’s always understood the importance of protocol. 

A slight pause then a heavy sigh comes over the comms as the pod aligns with the dock and the screen lights up green.

Steve lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, “Station crew ready for docking.”

“Pod copy.” 

Steve pushes the button to engage the docking clamps then pushes off from the console propelling himself towards the airlock in the middle of the station that he and Bucky have called home for the past twenty years. As he passes through the corridors from central control he catches his extended fingers on whatever he passes, pulling himself through the air as fast as he can. _Slow down there, cowboy, wouldn’t want to accidentally puncture a vent before your boy even gets a chance to float across the threshold._ That was one time, he thinks to himself. As he throws himself into the airlock door he can’t help the grin that breaks across his face. It’s been a long, long two weeks since Bucky had left for the edge of the Solar System on a science mission for his work with Shuri. When the station’s alarms go off indicating a successful seal he slaps his hand on the airlock release and pulls the lever to open the doors. 

He feels like a kid again as he runs a hand through his recently cut hair, trying to flatten the little tuft that just won’t stay down without gravity. He schools his features and crosses his arms, uncrosses them, then jams his hands in his pockets to keep from fidgeting with excitement. 

The doors retract and Captain Azari floats on the far side of the small space, as far from Steve as she can get. Steve’s eyes dart to the airlock of the small crew pod behind her but no one else emerges. 

“Steve.”

Her voice dies in the space between them. Steve doesn’t have to look at her to know that something has gone wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong and Bucky isn’t coming home now.

 

<<><>>+++><+++<<><>>

 

“Stevie, are you even listening to me?” 

Steve runs his fingers through Bucky’s long raven hair, enjoying the way it floats in the air as if flowing through an invisible current. “Of course I am, Buck.”

Bucky’s mouth quirks up on one side and Steve smiles lazily as he starts to pull him closer. “Oh really, Rogers. Then please explain to me how high energy sub-atomic particle interactions produced in the wake of the Sun ploughing through the diffuse super-heated intergalactic medium is gonna tell us something about quantum gravity and planes of parallel spacetime fields.”

Steve yanks Buck’s thighs until his legs wrap around his waist and he’s got that mouth of sass good and close where it belongs, “Mercy, Buck, I leave that deep science to you and Shuri, you know how that smart mouth of yours gets me going.” He plants a series of soft kisses on Bucky’s smiling mouth, persisting through the exasperated sighs until Bucky gives in and kisses him back.

Eventually, Bucky pulls back and Steve tips his head to look up at him, lazy and happy and just basking in the feeling of home. Bucky’s flesh hand comes up to his face and he traces Steve’s brow to his nose until Steve’s eyes close involuntarily and he gives a happy sigh. Bucky laughs and pushes into Steve, “Can’t ignore the rest of the universe forever, smart guy.” Steve’s back hits the side panel near the cupola and he grips Bucks hips to keep him from rebounding away, “I’ll give you some deep science to remember.”

Bucky is backlit by the vision of their little moon out the cupola’s windows, loose hair long and flowing around him again, eyes shining in the dark, lighting sparks inside Steve. He is too stunned to react to Bucky’s joke and he reaches out, “You are my universe.”

 

——-/-///-////-/////-//////-///////-/////////-

 

Steve’s eyes flutter open as the shuttles speed begins to match that of the massive space station they are approaching and a vague sense of gravity starts to pull him down into his flight chair. Out the front view screen Wakanda Science Station makes an impressive vision, a series of concentric cylinders in an elliptical Jovian orbit spinning on an axis tidally locked, forever pointing towards the gas giant. 

Wanda meets him outside the airlock. She says nothing as he falls into her embrace and Steve appreciates her silent understanding beyond words. He feels as though he will crush her even under the light gravity of the station, but if anything she’s become more fierce in her strength since she passed her hundredth year. His ribs are about to give out under that strength when she suddenly releases him and starts walking down the corridor to the main passageways that curve around the station.

Steve follows, his hands balled into fists at his side, too tense to call it strolling through the pace Wanda has set is slow enough. He contemplates the woman before him: her red hair had turned a deep silver decades ago, but the flecks of red in her eyes was something new. How long had it been since he’d last seen her? Probably the last time he’d left their home station around Europa, which was when? 5 years ago? Something like that. Bucky always said that time was relative and for him, it had slowed right down, his whole world narrowed down to just him, Buck and the little creatures on his little ice moon that he kept an eye on. _Pottering around in your garden all day, retirement suits you, Steve._ Steve agreed.

Steve was just getting used to the feeling of walking against a flat surface, all while his eyes told him he was climbing up the curve of the hallway as the spinning station constantly tried to fling him into Jupiter when they arrived at Shuri’s lab.

He entered and stopped just inside the door. Shuri was at a computer terminal floating in the air from some sort of device around her waist that occasionally shot off jets of air. The rig gave a series of small bursts and she swivelled in the air without turning her head. Her bright white hair formed a halo around her face, which was still bright with excitement despite the grave, apologetic expression in her eyes - it made her look younger than he knew she really was. 

Wanda didn’t stop walking until she was at Shuri’s side, taking her hand. Shuri let out a sigh, “Oh Steve.” Steve’s gut clenched in anticipation of the blow, but instead, she surprised him as she always did. Shuri’s conviction was the strongest thing about her, “There is still hope.”

He let out the breath he’d been holding and walked deeper into the room until he could take his friend’s other hand. He was leaning down to kiss her cheek when he noticed it. He’d almost missed it, it looked like just an extension of the ornate jewelry the great scientist and Queen favoured wearing, but as the spun gold ran from above her lip and across her cheekbone just along her ear the thin flexible tube gave it away for what it really was: an oxygen line. _This is a first. Or at least the first you have noticed. How long has it been again?_ Steve straightens and decides not to ask about it, yet. His voice sounds thin, desperate to his own ears, the words are ones he’s had little to no practice saying, “Tell me what to do.”

Shuri squeezes his hand, almost as strong as Wanda’s own grip and the stab of fear at seeing the oxygen intake pulls back somewhat. “Steve Rogers, it is so good to see you, even though you have barely changed in ten years, let alone the century over which we have known each other.” Steve must look taken aback by how wrong he was in how much time had passed because she starts laughing and Wanda only looks at him like he is the lost child she needs to care for again. “Oh don’t look so surprised. I know you have lost time floating in your bubble.” Her eyes go dark and she suddenly looks every one of her 103 years, “I am only sorry that you were pulled from it because we had run away with our theory and did not foresee all the possible consequences of our quest.” 

Steve knows the ‘we’ means Shuri and Bucky - they had been working closely for decades on theories of … stuff. He didn’t even really know what they did. Why hadn’t he paid attention? He could have foreseen the danger if he’d just listened instead of sticking his head in the sand. _Can’t take it all on by yourself, Steve._ The voice is amused, teasing, which is how he knows it’s not his.

He shuts his eyes, grinding his teeth and whispers under his breath, “Quiet.”  

“Steven.” It’s Wanda and she sounds urgent. Had she heard him? His eyes fly open and she is staring at him, hard. He thinks for sure she had heard him now and he’s about to explain when Shuri seems to shrink between them. He lifts her hand up as she slumps, her eyes squeezed shut in pain. The jets work overtime to keep her upright but to little avail. Shuri reaches out blindly with her other hand until her palm rests against Wanda's cheek, the other woman holding it there. Shuri opens her eyes again, visibly pushing away whatever physical pain is bothering her, “I’m all right, love, I just need to rest.”

As several attendants enter the lab, Steve and Wanda continue to hold Shuri between them. Shuri laughs again, as though at some inside joke. She looks to Steve, “There is, I believe, something that you can do to get Bucky back. I will explain to you what has happened on the way, but I am sorry, first I need to rest.”

As the attendants, none of whom Steve has met before (it had been so long, too long) help their Queen out of the room Steve calls out, “On the way where?”

Shuri gestures to her attendants who slow and turn her part ways to look back at Steve. She looks part ways apologetic and part ways mischievous, “On the way Earth.”

Steve can do nothing but stare as the automatic doors to the lab slide shut. He can suddenly feel every bit of the partial gravity of the station pulling him down into the floor. _Returning to the scene of the crime._

The sound of a throat clearing none too subtly jolts him from the well of dread forming in his heart. Wanda contemplates him, her head cocked to the side and arms crossed over her chest. When she speaks she leaves out any preamble, any contextual cues, not that they’ve ever really needed any between them.  She has only grown more direct with time, “Are you still seeing ghosts?”

“Hearing.” Steve corrects, then nods, looks down at his hands that have tightened again into fists, then back up, “It’s just the one ghost, though.”

 

————(—((—-:::::—))—)———

  


_My girl, my girl, don’t lie to me. Tell me where did you sleep last night…_

“My girl, my girl, don’t lie to me. Tell me where did you sleep last night…”

He doesn’t think he’d ever heard her sing more than a few bars of anything before, but here they were, taking a stroll on an icy moon around another planet, singing one of those old tunes that Buck used to obsessively play on his beat up old record player back in their dingy apartment back in Brooklyn at least two lifetimes ago. Well, he was singing. The other voice was just … wishful thinking or his mind finally failing. For what he lacked in any outward appearance of aging he made up for in eccentricities. Or at least that’s what Sam’s grandkids back on Earth always told him when he’d started asking them to send him old food he used to eat like tinned ham and kosher pickles from the deli in Red Hook that had miraculously survived the centuries. And Thanos’ culling, can’t forget that hard as he might try.

God but Buck had had a beautiful crooning voice. Still does, though it had grown deeper with a rough edge to it that never fails to raise the hair on the back of his neck and send a shiver deep inside. _I never heard the Winter Soldier sing._ “I don’t imagine you would have, I guess, and he was pretty quiet those first couple years in Wakanda.” Steve stops in front of a darkened spot tucked in under a shelf in the ice, yellowed with salt and sulphur. He bends down and wipes at the surface with his gloved fingers. It takes a bit of work to clean off enough of the frost to get at the clear patch. The Wakanda standard issue environment suit was less bulky than those first astronauts he’d seen on tv when he’d emerged from the ice back on Earth, but there was still some ways to go before he’d be able to have his usual dexterity. Bucky said that he could order the updated version from Shuri, but Steve was reluctant. Buck had accused him of being too fond of complaining and Steve couldn’t really argue with that. _When did you start acting like you can’t change anything and stop being the drive?_ Good question, but he didn’t have to think of the answer before it came out. “When I had nothing else to give.” He goes back to the song as he assembles the little drill assembly. 

_In the pines, in the pines, where the sun don’t ever shine..._

“In the pines, in the pines, where the sun don’t ever shine… ” 

When the pressure on the drill gives way Steve turns it off and pulls it carefully out of the hole. There is a little glowing flake-like organism clinging to the bottom so he sticks the end of the drill back through and into the liquid ocean beneath and gives it a gentle shake, “Come on little buddy, you can’t come with me yet, OK? Not until we know a bit more about you.” He takes the drill out again and it’s passenger free so he goes ahead and loads a sample tube on the end of a thin extractor. _I always imagined you as more of a dog person._ “Ha, ha. I always thought you would get a cat.” _Would have been nice, if I ever stayed in one place long enough. Ran out of time, I guess._ Steve withdraws the water sample and packs up the gear. “That’s one way of putting it.” 

Steve strolls back to the launch point where he can return to the station in orbit that had become their home. He has about twelve hours to secure the sample and clean up his mess before Bucky gets back from his latest research mission out to the heliopause, the shock wave created by the Solar System driving through the galaxy. His heart races and he tries to temper the thrill he always gets when Bucky comes home. _Your best guy._ “He sure is.” Steve pauses and looks up at the darkness. The station is just coming up around the horizon - time to get back. He imagines or thinks he imagines, his long-dead friend standing beside him, the glow from the lights of his environment suit causing a glow in her red hair just at the edge of his periphery. “Thank you, Nat, you know...for him.” _That’s what friends are for._ They continue singing as he waits.

_I’m gonna shiver the whole night through._

“I’m gonna shiver the whole night through.”

As the station gets closer it feels harder to raise his arm up to initiate his launch. He feels suddenly heavy, like the moon itself is pulling him down, back into the ice.

 

—*-*—*-*—**-*-**—*-*—*-*—

 

Steve’s eyes snap open and he looks sideways out the window as the shuttle bounces against the friction of the atmosphere. Everywhere is alive with greens, deep blues of the rivers and jewelled colours of the city. Wakanda.

As beautiful as the scene is, it does not feel like coming home. To distract himself from the unease, he thinks back to his conversations with Shuri as they travelled back down the Sun’s gravitational well. She had described at length the details of her and Bucky’s research. It stretched as far back to the time when Bucky first decided to study astronomy and had joined Shuri in her lab as he worked on his first thesis. Steve had known that Bucky had specialized in the physics of the universe, that together with Shuri, Wanda and others they were cracking the cosmological code of the unknown, but that was the extent of it. He hadn’t known, or hadn’t wanted to know, that they were trying to answer questions about what had happened back _then_.

Wanda had bitten her lip so hard Steve thought she’d broken skin, “We never did figure out where we went to, where Thanos had … sent us with the infinity stones. I cannot even say if there was consciousness or not, only that there was not nothing. There was _something_.”

“Ashes.” Steve had blurted out and right then he could feel them on his hands as his friends had disappeared like it was happening right at that moment. The sense memory was so strong he gripped his own fingers together just to feel something else.

“Yes, the ashes!” Shuri was inclined in her chair nestled against Wanda and under a thick layer of blankets, but the energy radiating from her voice was palpable. “That is precisely the phenomenon we began looking into. We always knew it was connected to the stones, but we did not know the significance until now.” Her face fell instantly and Steve started forward, reaching his hand out but she shook her head and he let it drop, “That is what Bucky was investigating at the bow shock, where the Sun’s power meets the sea of space as it ploughs through the galaxy, the closest and largest region of high energy material available to us. We figured out a way to recreate the power of the stones. Our mistake was underestimating the potential of the ashes.” Cold fingers emerged from the nest of blankets and locked on to Steve’s. “Energy, mass, cannot be created nor destroyed. There is always a balance and what was taken can be returned.” 

“Did the … ashes take Bucky...back?” Steve’s voice had been quiet and haunting even to his own ears.

The blankets shrugged and Shuri looked unsure for the first time Steve had ever witnessed. “I do not know, but I do think that we can even the balance in our favour.”

The shuttle finally comes to a stop on the ground and Steve sinks down into his seat. _Time to go._ He follows behind his friends as they make their way out, shading his eyes against the bright sun that seems to have lit the sky on fire, it is so bright and it has been so long since he’s been anywhere with open air. 

Steve had forgotten how heavy the Earth could make you feel. He walks beside Wanda and tries to keep his spine straight under a weight he’d tried hard to forget. There is much pomp and ceremony at the return of Queen Shuri, who smiles bright as day at all the people who had come out to see her, though she can’t go so far as raise her arm to wave. She is all but carried by the force of Wanda’s magic, for want of a better term, the red glow flowing from the arm wrapped about her waist, from the hand that grips hers. As it flows over their knuckles Steve is reminded of water flowing over rocks in a stream - he’s always had the impression, though he’s never asked, that Wanda is moving through a different world than the rest of them, that her power comes from her interaction with it and not directly from within herself. Worry is written all over her face, even as she tries to hide it in front of the crowds. Steve feels not for the first time that returning to Earth would be a mistake if the stakes weren’t so high. 

His old rooms are offered to him, but he doesn’t waste his time and heads directly to the lab to wait for Shuri. As he walks the halls it feels as though he is walking back in time, so little has changed with the place. He remembers T’Challa standing tall at the window, looking out over the land. He remembers the King now gone, his wisdom and power of forgiveness, of justice, as he offered Bucky a place to heal. _The White Wolf. More like the White Goat._ Steve suppresses a chuckle. He remembers neither Sam nor Nat willing to get too close to Bucky’s small herd when they’d visited. Steve hadn’t cared one lick about the smell, he’d pull Bucky close to him no matter what. 

An attendant comes to him soon after he arrives and takes him to Shuri’s rooms instead. At Steve’s questions, he only replies that he cannot answer and Steve gets the impression that he is upset. As he walks into the room he cannot immediately see Shuri or Wanda, only a group of people crowded on and around a large bed. As he gets closer he recognizes the dress of some as coming from other regions of Wakanda. The few closest he knows as some of T’Challas’ grandchildren. They part to let him through and that’s when he sees Shuri lying on the bed, propped up against Wanda’s shoulder. Her breathing is shallow and laboured and that’s when he knows the terrible price they are now paying to return to Earth. 

He is not aware he is kneeling until his knees hit the floor. He gently takes up her hand resting on the bed and kisses it. Her fingers tremble and he flashes on the last time he saw Peggy just before she passed and he thinks this is the moment that Shuri will leave them for the plains of her ancestors. But then something heavy drops into his palm and he draws back a little to see what it is. It looks like a bit of glass or amber that had turned a dark grey. In the center are flecks of something that look as though they are moving very slowly but continuously.

He feels wonder and dread mix in his gut and the urge to reach for a shield he hadn’t wielded in decades comes on strong, “What is it?”

“Ashes.” Shuri breathes the word, then follows it with her last, “Balance.”

 

=-=-=-===—-===-=-=-=

 

“She knew that living in low gravity was changing her and prolonging the inevitable at the same time. She also knew the price she would pay to return, but she was the only one who could retrieve the sample. How she was able to contain the ashes after the infinity stones were activated is still a mystery. That is the depth of the secrecy surrounding it.” 

They are sitting on a small boulder by the ancient tree that was Shuri’s favourite place to be when she was home. It had been a day since she had passed and the rituals and celebrations of returning to her ancestors would be going on in the city for many days yet, but here was quiet so here was where Wanda took Steve to regroup.

Steve twisted the little living stone around on his palm. The ghost in his head is conspicuously quiet considering they were in a place that was so connected to the ancestral plane. “The question is how do we use this piece of the past to restore balance?”

Wanda holds out her hand until Steve hands over the ashes then holds it close enough to her face that her eyes start to cross. 

“You know your eyeballs are going to get stuck like that if you stare too long.”

Wanda lets out a huff and wacks him on the arm. The corner of her mouth twitches and Steve counts it as a win, though he finds it hard to believe that smiling again will be possible for either of them.

“I’ll have you know that crossing my eyes allows me to see further into the depths of the mind.”

Steve hesitates at that, “Really?”

Wanda rolls her eyes hard and gets up, “No.” She starts walking back towards the city, heavily favouring one side as though hefting a great weight under the influence of gravity and loss. “Come. I think I know who may have some answers.”

She tosses the ashes back to him and he catches them deftly in his hand. He grips them tight, bringing his fist up to his lips and whispers under his breath for whatever it is worth, “Hold on, Buck, I’m coming for you.”

 

|—)(—)(—)(—)(—)(—)(—|

 

“So, like, this one time I was standing in front of this taqueria with my cousin Xochi, you know that one down by the highway on-ramp that’s so crowded after dark don’t matter if it’s a party night or a school night, know what I’m sayin? No way you’ve never been there bruh! That is a crying shame, my brother, I would take you there this very moment if the place hadn’t been ghosted with half the planet, right? May take a few more months to get back to normal, if such a thing is possible, like seriously though the alhambre was out of this world, but I’m talking ‘bout a suadero so close to heaven, with the little chopped up onions and cilantro and the best fucking salsa you have ever tasted, don’t tell my mama, rest her soul. So, like I have a plate of five of those suckers in one hand, balancing my jarrito under the plate, you know you can tell who legit knows what they’re doing by how they hold their bottle while they’re eating street tacos, right? You are Steve Fucking Rogers, of course, you fuckin know, I would never doubt you bruh. So, I’m enjoying the sunset, stuffing my mouth with tacos from heaven and washing it down with some sweet mandarina and just enjoying the moment yo! When I feel a hard fucking knock right on my arm, the one holding my plate so you know it got my attention. And that’s when my cousin tells me ‘Cos! I’ve been trying to get your attention for like five minutes straight. Leto ran out of tortillas. Let’s go down to the boulevard and see if Tia Rosa has any buñuelos.’”  

Luis is looking at him expectantly, so Steve feels compelled to say something, anything. “So, when you disappeared after Thanos snapped his fingers, it was like eating tacos and then … not eating tacos?”

“Exactly bruh! One minute I’m enjoying my fucking self to the max and the next I look up and I’m in the upside fucking’ down. Where’s Barb, ya know? Or Barb’s fucking tortillas, ha! But like, seriously, my girl Nat is like Eleven without the buzz cut, and when she used to get that cherry jam my neighbour’s dog sitter’s grandma’s knitting group makes, damn! Leggo my Eggo, know what I’m sayin.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that, but he does suddenly feel really hungry, despite the melancholy pause after the mention of Nat. He starts to move them to where Bucky is waiting outside what used to be their old apartment in Brooklyn and is now a Circle K that’s been neglected since the culling. He thinks this will be the last time he ever steps foot in this part of his past and he can’t bring himself to feel anything but anxious to leave.

Luis slaps a hand over his heart and snaps out of his all too brief silence, “So like now that the big bad is gone and the supergroup has expanded, what are you going to do, bro? Are we talking retirement? ‘Cause I got an uncle with a timeshare in Huatulco that could be pretty sweet now that we’re not all under threat of space fire and cooperating all friendly with the rest of the galaxy. Hey, can I call you Picard? ‘Cause this is some serious Star Trek shit we’re living now.”

Steve shrugs and looks forward where they’re heading, “Sam’s the Captain now, not sure how much he’d like to be called ‘Picard’ to be honest. I dunno. Yeah, maybe… retirement.” He should feel free, but it’s all still a bit numb when he thinks about his place in the grand scheme of things. “I don’t think the world needs me on the front line of anything anymore.” 

 

__—__—__#__#__—__#__#__—__—__

 

Steve dozes where he sits.

_Stevie...take me home._

Buck’s voice rings clear in his mind, his words and tone so familiar it would be like déjà vu if his memories weren’t as clear as a curse. Instantly he is transported back several lifetimes to a foxhole in France. He’d thought Buck had the fever that was going around the Commandos, a chill borne from days hiding out in the damp and the mud. It was the last time Steve could remember seeing Bucky glassy-eyed and feverish. In retrospect, it was likely the experimental super soldier serum that Zola had pumped him with, but Steve had been ignorant of it at the time. Regardless, the tables had turned and Steve was minding his best friend, using one of his needless extra shirts to wipe the sweat off his brow. That was also the first and last time Buck had mentioned wanting to go home while in the middle of their fight. Steve had thought him delirious, and in his worry had agreed. Yeah, Buck, don’t you worry. I’ll take care of it.

 _Stevie._ Why was he thinking about those days now? Though he’d gladly stay in the dream just to be by Buck’s side. He grips the stone ashes in his hand tighter.

_Steve._

Steve’s eyes snap open at Natasha’s voice in his mind. His ghost. She could convey so much in just one word, by just saying his name. ‘It’s okay’ and ‘we’re fucked’ just by the tone. ‘Be reasonable’ or ‘come right fucking now’ by how long she spent on the vowels. If he could see her eyes then they could communicate whole messages between them: If we don’t get the bullet out now he’s going to bleed out and then we’ll have to start recon from scratch; There are times for you to  jump out of airplanes without a chute and all of them were before 1945, don’t make me use this knife to pin you in your seat; I just spent all morning making pancakes and if you put that last one that you just covered with the last of my cherry jam, emphasis on the ‘my’, into that black hole of a mouth then I swear you will lose a finger and I will make it my life’s mission that it won’t grow back. 

As it is, his ghostly friend is immediate yet not alarming. The transport touches ground. He doesn’t need to hear her voice to know it’s time to go.

 

—.—.---.---.—.—

 

Steve stands in front of the floor to ceiling window in one of the top level labs in the old Avenger Tower, renamed back to Stark Tower decades ago. He’s been out of touch for a while now but is under the impression that it has been run by some board since Tony passed. At least that’s what Sam Jr. had explained to him. 

After Wanda convinced him that Shuri’s colleagues in New York would be the best chance they would have at surmising what to do about the Ashes, Steve had gotten in touch with the Wilson’s soon afterwards. Samantha, or Sam Jr., was Sam’s daughter. In her seventies now, Steve had known her since she was born. It had been decades since they’d since each other in person, though he’d always kept in touch with her and the plethora of grandchildren and nieces and nephews. Uncle Steve, they called him, though some of the younger ones loved to call him great uncle, or great-great uncle just to see the look on his face. He always indulged them with feigned outrage, though truth be told he did feel ancient. But they were family and he loved them, and they him. They never tired of hearing his old war stories, especially the exploits of the Falcon and Winter Soldier in those few years after they’d reversed the culling and before both he and Buck had decided that they could leave the fight in good conscience.

Last night Wanda had stayed in Stark Tower, under increasing strain from the force of gravity. She snarked that she had to use her own power just to hold herself up, but Steve knew that she was in pain. She’d insisted he leave her to go see the Wilson’s so he had gone to Queens where Sam Jr. lived. The night had been a late one and though it had started out with melancholy as he explained what happened to Bucky, the endless optimism that he found in the Wilson’s buoyed him. _You are never alone,_ his ghost had reminded him and he conceded that that was mostly true. 

He faces towards Brooklyn and the East River now, surveying the massive changes since he was last there. The river itself is much higher, held back from taking over the low-level portions of Red Hook and the Battery by massive walls. Sea levels over the globe had risen, and the continental ice sheets at the poles all but disappeared. He thinks back to their approach to his home planet only a few days ago. Shuri had called it the Pale Blue Dot with reverence, but to Steve, it seemed like the barnacled and worn steel walls were only holding back the inevitable. 

He shifts focus to some work being done further out by what was once Coney Island. Massive machines are lowering huge metal structures into a cavity created in the river. It looks like massive pillows made of something that isn’t quite steel, though where there would be seams there’s nothing but smooth metal reflecting the sunrise.

“It’s vibranium, part of a pilot project with Wakanda. We call it the Mantle. It’s essentially a small scale artificial continent. I mean, like, it can totally withstand magma, if it ever came to that, you know?”

 _Speaking of family._ Steve can’t help his mouth quirking up as he shifts his focus to the reflection of the person behind him. Maria Bertha Rodriguez Sanchez was a lead scientist at the Infinity Institute for Cosmological Research in Stark Industries. While she’d followed in the footsteps of the Barnes in both looks and profession, she took after her grandfather, Luis, in the gift of communication. Like many members of his Earth-bound family, they had never met in person. She holds her arms open to him now, a smile on her lips but a look of fear she is holding back. Steve bends down to give her a proper embrace and is ashamed to admit he leans on her as she rubs a hand up and down his back in comfort.

He straightens up and tries for a smile, “So, you’re building new continents now?”

She scoffs and leads him towards a glassed-in office to the side of the workbench, “Hardly, just trying to keep the ones we’ve got on life support a bit longer.” She pulls out a chair for Steve and goes to sit behind her desk, “It’s crazy impressive, but not really my department, Tio.” 

Steve nods in acknowledgement but before he can speak his eyes land on a video image projection set amongst a group on a table behind her. He remembers the moment captured in the display locked in a four-second replay forever as though it had just happened. It was the last time he’d been in their old neighbourhood in Brooklyn. They are in front of a street vendor, Scott and Luis are proudly holding up some tacos. Steve and Bucky stand close together behind them, arms slung around each other's shoulders. Buck’s head tips to lean on Steve’s shoulder as his grin spreads across his face, lighting up his eyes. Just that morning Buck had been invited to work with Shuri in her labs and by the next evening, they’d be on a transport back to Wakanda. It had been a year since Buck had discovered that Luis was actually his nephew, that his sister Becca’s family had grown and by extension his own. He and Luis had gotten pretty close in that time and had always kept in touch even as space and distance separated them. Luis had always sent the most confusing and hilarious messages, all stored on their drives back home on the station. It was a comfort to know that their verbose friend’s generosity of spirit and endless enthusiasm lived on one way or another.

 _Steve._ Pay attention goes unsaid, and his eyes snap back up to Bertha who is looking at him worriedly. He hangs his head but lifts it up quickly again before he makes her worry more, “Sorry, I just…. it’s been weeks since Buck’s… disappearance, even longer since he first left on his mission and I ….” Miss him, like a black hole is slowly taking over my insides, are the words he doesn’t say.

Bertha nods, “No, I get you, Tio, don’t you worry about it, not here. Sometimes we gotta keep up appearances even though it costs us to do it, and it just goes into the universal entropy pit of useless energy, but not in here.” She looks off to the side as if seeing something in the distance, “Though not actually that useless after all.” She looks back to Steve and smiles, “I know a bit about what Shuri, rest her soul, and uncle Buck were up to out there at the edge of the solar system.” She shifts around in her chair and looks a bit nervous as she holds open her hand to him, “Can I see it?”

Steve doesn’t need to ask what she’s talking about. He reaches into an inner breast pocket and pulls out the sample of the ashes, placing it gently in Bertha’s hand. She holds it up to her glasses and lets out a low whistle that is so reminiscent of Bucky that he grips the arms of his chair to ride out the vertigo. 

Bertha places the sample on a platform and immediately a series of soft light beams scans the object. She hands it back after that and Steve puts it back in his pocket, pressing it into his heart for just a moment. As she reads the output from the scanner, Bertha hums a tuneless melody. “Yeah, I suspected as much.” She rotates the 3D projected output so Steve can get a look at whatever she sees there that is significant, though he can’t make heads or tails of it except to know that hope lies where she is currently pointing. “See that series of bright spots? How they seemingly flit in and out of existence?” It does seem vaguely familiar and a tenuous idea starts forming in his mind though it fails to coalesce. Bertha drags his attention back, “I’ve seen some crazy shit, like phenomena stupid in its awesomeness studying what formed the infinity stones, to begin with, this is universe creating kinda stuff and yet, the universe is a small place, ya know? Like how back in the day you had to save said universe a lot? And you had an engineer buddy, who just happened to rob the house of an experimental quantum physicist and got involved in all that shit so he could end up helping you with the world saving, and his best friend, who also helped rob that house but you know, needs must, just happens to be the great nephew of your best friend who also is in the universe saving business, like I know in my science mind that everything is coincidence and we like to make connections between actually unrelated events but damn if it doesn’t want to make you believe in destiny, right?”

She waits for him to say something. Steve had never known how to answer Luis, but whatever ended up coming out of his mouth always seemed to be enough so he goes with that and says, “Yeah.” 

Bertha’s face lights up and she points to Steve’s heart, “I have seen that behaviour before, just this one time but that’s all it takes, and it’s from another old friend of yours.” She leans over and pulls a Stark communications device between the two of them. Steve notices that it has a piece of paper taped over the initialization scanner with the words _SPACE PHONE_ handwritten in block letters. 

The voice of the building’s AI comes over the line asking who Bertha would like to connect with, “Give me the Milano.”

  


()()()()()()()()()()()((((()))))()()()()()()()()()()()()

  


“Steven, my old friend! It warms the cockles of my heart to see you again!” Thor lays a massive hand on his shoulder and shakes him none too gently. His tone turns somber in an instant, “Though it pains me that it is under such circumstances.” He rallies and tries for a rueful grin that Steve cannot bring himself to match, “However, it would not be the first time we have weathered this storm together, would it not? The knowledge that we have claimed victory time and again gives me confidence that you will succeed where others would have faded to dust.” 

Steve grasps his friend’s forearm and tries to return the hopeful smile but fails. The nagging feeling that he is on a wild goose chase has been plaguing him ever since arriving in New York. _Would I do that to you?_ “No.” He answers his ghost at length but quickly realizes he must have said it out loud as Thor’s face immediately falls. Steve scrambles to recover the mood, “No doubt.”

Thor’s smile wobbles, caught between boundless optimism and a severe lack of confidence, probably in his friend’s mental state. Steve straightens his spine and throws back his shoulders, his old standby pose for instilling confidence in the room, even if he was struggling to feel it himself. They are standing in the great hall in New Asgard a few days after Bertha made the call to Thor and his travelling companions. In a stroke of luck, the Milano had been on its way to visit the now Earth-bound kingdom and Valkyrie had been more than welcoming. 

A looming figure moves out from behind Thor, “I am Groot.”  When Steve had first met Groot it had been on the battlefield many decades before, the last time he had lost Bucky. They had been smaller then, not quite as tall as Steve. Now they towered over everyone in the room, head bent at an awkward angle to avoid hitting the ceiling lamps, body twice as wide as Thor’s who was a large man himself. 

Before Steve could do more than shake their hand and wonder again at the diversity of life in their small corner of the universe, Bertha starts pulling Groot toward the portable scanner she had set up at one end of the massive wooden table in the center of the hall. Thor looks nervously between the huge piece of furniture and his friend the walking tree, but Groot does not seem to be bothered and gracefully manoeuvres where he is asked.

“Now Groot, remember that time when you were aiding us in establishing the Einstein-Rosen, ugh, rainbow bridge portal and Heimdal asked if you could pass the keg of ale, but you didn’t want to let go of the coolant lever, which was a good call! You do not want to see what happens when a super-fluid coolant under centrifugal forces strong enough to create quantum tubules does when it undergoes decontainment, seriously yo! So like kudos to you even though when you stretch-grew your arm to grab the beers it was the same time Peter was coming down the hill in the gator too fast and drove through your limb like it wasn’t even there?” Groot rubbed at what would be their elbow and Steve would swear they were grimacing. Bertha continued, “I don’t know how to explain your luminescent nano-particle like life force that you used to reattach that limb, but here, look at this.” She pushes a command in the luminescent display and the fragment of the ashes that Shuri had saved pops into the air between them. Bertha moves her hands to extend the display and enlarge the projection until it is nearly as large as Groot. 

The room stares transfixed at the activity within the ashes. Steve finds it hard to describe, even to himself. It is fluid and yet flakes away when it bunches up too close. It is golden and yet beyond colour. He doesn’t even know what _it_ is. _Home sweet home._ What’s that supposed to mean?

Wanda’s hand slips around his arm and he automatically tightens it to his side, supporting her. She draws in a sharp breath and Steve immediately looks down at her, worried that all the recent stress is finally taking its toll, but she is looking across the room, eyes wide in alarm.

He looks up to find Groot has managed to pry off a great steel sword that was hanging above the massive fireplace at the end of the room. His arm is stretched across the table under the display of the ashes hovering above it.

Thor laughs nervously, “What are you doing my friend?”

Groot simply replies, “I am Groot.” Which Steve is unable to interpret though judging by Thor’s immediately trying to grab at the sword mustn't have meant anything good.

The sword comes down hard on Groot’s massive limb, despite Thor hanging onto his other arm. Steve starts forward but comes up sharp when Groot drops the sword and holds out his hand placatingly.

“I am Groot.” They repeat, reaching down to grab their broken limb on the table. If the display of the ashes caught everyone’s attention, the sight of the thousands, more likely millions or billions of tiny glowing points manifesting around where Groot had cut their arm makes time come to a halt.

Streams of the microscopic lights reach out into the room, probing the people and spaces around Groot’s injury. A group makes its way towards Steve and he holds out his hand without thinking. As the lights dance around his fingers he brings his hand closer to get a better look. It is difficult to see against the brightness, but they are actually bunches of even smaller seemingly glowing structures that coalesce then flake off before coming back together again. “Wait, are these the ashes?” A single patch of golden light breaks away from a group and drifts towards Steve’s nose as though bobbing on an invisible wave. “Hey, little guy.” He flashes to the surface of his tiny ice moon and what he thought of as creatures living in the unknown depths below the surface. He looks up to Groot, who is already reattaching his limb with the help of the creatures, or the ashes, whatever he should call them. “I know these.” He takes a step forward, “They live within you?”

Bertha lets out a low whistle, “I think we have a lot to talk about big guy.”

“I am Groot.”

He looks to Thor desperately who translates, “They say no, but they know how to … create them? No, call them? That they maintain the balance.”

Steve and Wanda exchange a look, both remembering Shuri’s last words. Steve’s hand automatically covers his heart, where the fragment still lies safely in his pocket. His mind searches for understanding, but is at a loss, “What do I do?” 

“I am Groot.” Groot supplies as though it were obvious, and this time Steve is pretty sure he understands.

_Steve. Go home._

 

====+====+=+=+====+====

 

“Steve.”

They had always been able to read each other and the message was loud and clear: I’m sorry but you have to let me go. Now. 

But he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, so she said it again. “Steve.” Her eyes pleaded with him: This is how I wipe my ledger clean. Let me, please. 

Nat’s grip on his wrist was loose but now she stretched her fingers away from him, even as her other hand reached for the last infinity stone. 

He didn’t know what his eyes were telling her but it must have been: You don’t have to do this, we will find another way. We always find a way.

But this was the way and Nat always made her own choices, Steve would never get in the way of that. So he unclenches his fingers and focuses on the feeling of her hand slipping through his for the last time. 

And that was it. Nat was gone but they’d reversed Thanos’ culling. When he’d finally got Buck back in his arms the relief was overwhelming, he couldn’t process it at the time, couldn’t think too much on anything that had happened. Most people joked that he’d been through the wringer so many times he must have been used to it by then. Bucky had noticed ...something off in Steve, but he was the last person to push him before he was ready, which he often knew well before Steve did. Besides, he was going through his own processing of his experience and Steve would be damned if he didn’t try his hardest to help him. Sure, he started hearing Nat in his head but she’d always been an external voice of logic and now he’d just internalized it. She had been his friend, he loved her and missed her, plain and simple. Sometimes he would imagine Sam talking to him too, or what Peggy would say if he could see him living in a damn space station. It was, if not normal, at least not totally unexpected. He was a super soldier who didn’t physically age, that had to have strange consequences. Over time he thought he had moved on, but that probably would have required thinking about it, to begin with.

Guess they hadn’t been able to let go after all.

 

-x-xox—o-x-xox-x-o—xox-x-

 

“What if this doesn’t work?”

It was a question Steve never asked himself, not in his head, not in his heart and certainly never out loud. But here he was standing on the surface of his Europa, his and Bucky’s home, looking down into a hole in the ice with a rock in one hand and a tenuous grasp of the logic behind what the hell he was doing there. 

The breathy voice of Natasha, his own personal ghost, answered back what his subconscious always knew: _Then you do the next thing, then the next thing, the next, and the next, until it is done._

Glancing back over his shoulder he looks back to the Milano parked on the surface a good 30 meters away from where the ice is still thick enough to support the ship. Groot gives him a wave from the cockpit window and Thor gives him an encouraging nod. Wanda floats in her environment suit outside the loading platform, ready and waiting with an extra suit and medical equipment for whatever may happen. She is grim-faced but already stronger once they’d returned to zero-g. Steve is so thankful for her it is difficult to express, though he is pretty sure she has always known.

He turns back to the hole he had made the last time he had taken sub-surface samples. There is already a thick layer of ice that had grown over the hole in the weeks he has been away and he bends down to his knees to begin the work of clearing it again. He keeps the ashes in one fist while he starts the portable laser torch with the other.  Just as he brings the beam to the surface he notices something under his other hand as it presses into the frozen layer, holding him up against the weak gravity. On instinct, he turns off the torch and immediately he notices that the ice under his fist has changed colour. Or, no, the ice is starting to light up.

_Here they come._

He keeps his hand against the surface of the ice, holding back the primal instinct to back away from the unknown as the light begins to brighten and spread. He stumbles forward as the weight on his fist breaks through the surface, quickly re-shifting his weight to his knees and drawing his hand up out of the water. Immediately, one of the glowing embers like the ones that had flowed out of Groot follows his hand out. Improbably, the thought that it’s the same little glowing creature he had met the last time he’d been there nags at his mind. Steve feels compelled to soothe it as it dances around his knuckles, probing at the cracks between his fingers, “Hey little one, this what you’re looking for?”

As he opens his hand, holding out the ashes before him, a massive stream of the glowing creatures bursts out of the water and begins to swirl around the stone. Steve is so lost in wonder as he watches them come together and break apart again as they swirl around his gloved fingers and palm he doesn’t notice when he stands to his feet. He vaguely thinks that someone is talking to him through the comms but it’s hard to pay attention as the growing light around him increases, blocking out his surroundings. The activity of the creatures, or the ashes, or whatever they are becomes so intense that he can barely see his hand anymore, much less the stone. The thought that he may have dropped it sends a panic through him and he closes his hand again only to find it blocked by something larger. He tries to clear the space in front of his helmet so he can see as he feels along something long and slender with his other, but to no avail. 

Suddenly, something grips his wrist but before he can react a crackle of static comes over his comms.

“..eve…...st…..vie...”

It’s Bucky’s voice, he’d swear it. Steve instinctually reaches out into the swirling cloud of light with both arms to find a very solid and very familiar bulk fall into his chest with no small amount of force.

“Bucky? Buck?” His helmet knocks against something hard as he awkwardly tries to squint through the blinding light.

It was definitely Buck’s voice that comes through the static, “..eah, ..punk….me Stevie, it’s … it’s me.” 

Steve closes his eyes and breathes deeply for what feels like the first time in ages. It had worked. He could hardly explain it, but Shuri had been right about setting the balance. His arms close around Bucky, who must still be wearing the environment suit he’d disappeared in judging by the awkward tilt of their heads as they cling to each other.

The lightness behind his eyelids begins to fade so Steve chances opening his eyes, hoping that they were still on Europa though really, he’d prefer following Bucky to wherever he was over facing the universe without him again.

As the glowing creatures begin to fade they flake away in darkening clumps. As the new ashes seem to sink into nothingness drawn by an unseen force he hears Nat’s voice as though from across a room.  

 _Steve._  

The “see you around” is implied, he can hear it, even though her tone has a finality about it that makes his gut churn. 

“Thank you.” He says as the last of the ashes disappear, a few glowing creatures returning to the hole that had broken through. 

He chances pulling away from Bucky so he can get a good look at him, spinning them a half turn to get the light from Jupiter to shine through his faceplate. The beaming face of James Buchanan Barnes, his Bucky, handsome as ever shining back at him, nothing but wonder and confusion in his eyes.

Buck’s eyes dip in that way of his that always sent a shiver down Steve’s spine as his gloved hands come up to grab the sides of Steve’s faceplate, “Stevie, should I even ask how you managed to get me back here?”

Steve knocks his helmet against Bucky’s. What he wouldn’t do to get this man back into the station and out of this suit right that moment, like nothing would be real until he could get his hands on him. “I’ll always come for you Buck, you know that.”

“Yeah, I know it. I’m sorry I fell again.” His voice is so fond and so sad at the same time that it goes straight to Steve’s heart. The relief starting to flood his veins makes his muscles weak. He just needs to hold on a little longer before they can rest.

Bucky aligns their faceplates again, his movements urgent, “I saw her, Stevie. I saw her over there, on the other side.” Buck’s voice is quiet but filled with something like wonder or disbelief.

“Saw who, Buck?” It suddenly occurs to him that Bucky has traversed dimensions of the universe that they are only beginning to conceive of, much less understand. “Was it Shuri?”

Bucky’s brow creases in sudden confusion like he does when Steve says something ludicrous, and it’s so cute Steve wishes he could kiss him. “Shuri? No, Nat. I saw Natalia.”

Steve freezes, “What?” He finds himself suddenly blinking furiously, flashes of his last moments with Nat from almost a century before flashing behind his eyelids. “What?” He repeats weakly, barely a whisper.

Bucky looks at him sadly, like he understands something that Steve can barely stand to look at. He nudges Steve with his helmet and squeezes him tighter, holding him up. When had that happened? When had Steve all but collapsed into Bucky’s arms?

Bucky’s voice comes over the comms, soothing him, “She’s OK, Steve. She...I don’t know how to explain it, not yet, but she’s OK.”

Steve can feel his face collapsing as his entire body seems to curl into Bucky and he finally let’s go.

 

^|^|^|^|^|^||^|^|^|^|^|^

 

“It was uncanny, as though the ideas we’d written out on paper, well, holographic display since we’re living in the Future and all, they all were playing out before us like some sort of sleight of hand trick, like the universe was running a scam, getting us to give up our last penny before it would show us what lay under the cup, you know? The cup being solar neutrinos trapped in a mix of heavy ions and plasma so energetic it’s damn near relativistic. I mean the condensed magnetic field in the shock zone alone, I’m surprised I didn’t end up five universes over.” Bucky is looking into the wall over Steve’s shoulder as he describes his experience again, but he may as well be looking into the depths of the galaxy with the stars shining in his eyes. Steve can only imagine what kind of fool he looks like, basking in Bucky’s awe. Then his face falls as he looks wistfully out across the distance behind those eyes, “The information we got, the sheer data alone much less what happened to me and how you got me out...I wish Shuri were here.” His hand falls to Steve’s chest and he takes it and places it over his heart, pressing down. Bucky smiles at that, then winks. “Sorry, Stevie, I didn’t mean to sink so deep into the technical mire again.” A sly smile, the one he’s given Steve since they were teenagers, seemingly designed specifically to make Steve’s insides melt in submission, slides over his features, “Don’t want to put you to sleep yet.”

Bucky is sat over Steve as they lounge on their bed, straddling his thighs. It was their third and last night in their private quarters on board the Wakandan Science Station and they were going to take advantage of the artificial gravity as much as they could decently get away with. Ever since Shuri’s memorial and the official handing over of the reigns of the Station’s science mission to Shuri’s grand-niece, Bucky had been going over and over his experience in official debriefs and casual conversations alike with the scientists on board. Steve accompanied him throughout, finding he never tired to hear of it, throwing in what he learned from Shuri at the end, though in much more layman's terms than they were probably used to hearing. But it would be over soon and they would be going home with the promise to return for monthly check-ins with the physicians and psychologists on the station. Bucky would have years of data to incorporate into their cosmological models and Steve had an update to his mission as well. The nature of the life forms on their little moon would be studied in a different light, though he’d fought hard to keep interference to a minimum. For now, at least, he and Buck would be the only human presence on Europa and he aimed to keep it that way for a long time. The time for sitting back was over.

Steve runs his hands up Bucky’s thighs slowly, pulling himself into a seated position and settling back into the cushioned headboard. “Don’t be sorry, Buck, I ain’t the least bit tired, and besides, I want to know,” and Steve found he really meant it, “Tell me everything.”

 

_____/\/\/\/\\_____

  
  


 

  
  
  
  
  



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